Healed with a kiss

DURING a visit to Sydney's St Vincent Hospital yesterday, Tony Abbott gave a Valentine's kiss to Paula Ward, in hospital for diabetes treatment.

DURING a visit to Sydney's St Vincent Hospital with Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull yesterday, Tony Abbott gave a Valentine's kiss to Paula Ward, in hospital for diabetes treatment. She assessed the situation excitedly afterwards: "I'd never really met a politician before. It was nice of him, but a bit of a shock." Our man on the spot, Jared Owens, asked her whether Abbott was a good kisser, to which she replied: "Well how should I know? He just kissed me on the cheek."

On an MP stomach

AS she readied her wok for battle in a cooking competition to see in the Chinese New Year in Sydney's Eastwood Plaza yesterday, Maxine McKew revealed that she and partner Bob Hogg inhabit what may be thought of as a reverse-Abbott household. "Bob does 98 per cent of the cooking," McKew told Strewth. "He took it over some years ago and, like most blokes when they take over something, he became obsessive. I'm not often allowed near the kitchen." Yet despite being a self-described "culinary idiot", the member for Bennelong was happy to put in a guest appearance in the first heat of yesterday's competition, armed with a well-thumbed copy of Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking and some concise advice from Kitchen Hogg: "Do the chicken and cashews; even you can't muck that up." Strewth can report McKew's dish agreed with our palate (and a discerning organ it is). More significantly, she got the thumbs-up from the locals as she went around feeding them, giving the expression "serving the electorate" a fresh lease in the process. But despite her success, McKew doesn't plan to emulate Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and hit MasterChef: "I don't think I could stand that level of national humiliation."

Laud 'mayor'

AS McKew worked her wok (under a banner boldly, if somewhat mystifyingly, proclaiming "Lunar New Year Clelbration"), her media adviser Matthew Pulford was attracting a following among a small knot of women taking snaps of him with their mobile phones. Once they were disabused of the notion that Pulford was the mayor, the ringleader was philosophical: "He's good-looking anyway."

Hello, Cicero

SENIORS magazine 50 something has introduced to its pages a "a former high-profile member of federal parliament" to comment on election-year antics, safely hidden behind the nom de keyboard of Cicero. So which prominent federal pollie with a penchant for writing has recently had his time freed up? Let us consider, completely at random, the possibility that it's Peter Costello. Like Costello, the Roman senator Cicero did time as a lawyer and was by all accounts one of ancient Rome's finer orators; we suspect Pete harbours few doubts about his own skills in that department. Also, Cicero considered his political career to be his most important achievement; so far, so good. Cicero came to a particularly gruesome end, while Pete simply seeped out the door; well, we never said our case was watertight. And then let's consider the writing style, such as this reflection on the drawbacks of our short electoral cycle: "In short we probably get a focus on delivering good policy for about one third of a normal three year-term. What a silly way to run a country!" Despite the exclamation mark, it's clearly too restrained to be Mark Latham. It could be someone who left a while ago; what's Gareth Evans up to in his spare time? We hear the magazine has also been approached by a sitting MP, who has offered to write under the name Invictus. Biggus Dickus can't be far behind.

Bartlett's emergency

PERCEPTION and image play such a large role in modern politics, so Strewth salutes the courage of Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett for turning up at campaign event yesterday in an emergency helicopter. Sure, he was there to announce funding for the helicopter service, but in an election campaign there are some things you just shouldn't be pictured getting out of.

Just our Luck

TWITTER has seen the rise of everything from a fake Stephen Conroy to the keyboard-bashing ghost of Samuel Johnson. Now TV's former Mr Omnipresent, Peter Luck, has come out firing, or at least someone pretending to be him has. Some sample tweets, as carefully bowdlerised for our family-friendly pages: "Still waiting for those [lower orifices] at Martin Place to call me up about hosting Today Tonight over summer"; "Why the f . . k does [George] Negus still have a gig and I don't?"; "@7pmproject Just so you know - I'm cheaper than Negus. Give me a call"; "Is it too early for a new series of This Fabulous Century? I need a [fornicating] new Mercedes". Is it someone pretending to be Luck? Or is it Luck hoping we'll think it's someone pretending to be him, while he gets one or two things off his chest? Who knew Twitter would become so Escher-esque.